Page 5 - Wood Plenty, Grass Good, Water None

Preface and Acknowledgments
Thefirstgovernment-supportedexpeditionsthroughnorthernArizona— thoseledbySitgreaves, Whipple,Ives,andBeale— usedhorses,mules,andinWhipple'scase,equine-drawnwagons, to traverse the area. Beale experimented with camels but also used equines. While these par tieshaddefiniteroutesthattheywantedtoexplore,theirtravelwas much controlledbyterrain andtheavailabilityofwaterandgrassforlivestock.Theytraveledinthecoolermonthshoping toreducetheneedforwater,themostcriticalrequirement.Asaresultoffall,winter,orearly spring travel, they arrived in the high country of the Southwest when nights were inevitably cold, and winter storms could make life miserable for days at a stretch. Thus, a third item, woodforfires,becameimportant.Inaddition,alloftheseexplorationsweremadewithaneye to future settlement, to wagon or railroad routes, raising of cattle, and farming potential. Any such enterprises required wood, water, and grass, and these elements appear in the various diaries in a virtual rhythm. T h e last daily entry for m a n y of the diarists w a s a notation describing the availability of wood, grass, and water. Thus the title of this report.
The work reported here was carried out mostly as a "hobby" project. Ireceived limited funding from two foundations, mainly to help locate and acquire copies of historic photographs. The ChinoValleyDistrictoftheU.S.ForestServiceprovidedsomehelpwithphotoprocessingand vehicleexpenses,strictlyonacost-sharebasis.Asaresult,Imustpresentthereportforwhat itis:alimitedeffortbyaninterestedindividualtodocumentconditionsinthewoodlandsjust before and during Anglo settlement, which includes my own photographs and observations regardingconditionsinthesesamewoodlandsduringthe1990s.Ihavenowmovedawayfrom theareaofstudyandontootherinterests.Asaresult,Iam unlikelytofilanyofthegapsthat may exist. Ihave tried to remove unwarranted conclusions or speculations regarding pre- or post-settlement anthropogenic or climatic effects. Iassume that anyone studying vegetation
history in the area would want to delve into historic photos and journals, and Ihope that this manuscript might save them time.
Unraveling the various routes taken by separate parties of the Whipple expedition has been achallenge.Presentingtheminawaythatiseasytounderstand,evenmorechallenging.I have tried to clearly separate the travels of Whipple's three reconnaissance excursions from the more restricted travels of the larger wagon train. Ifalternating between the two remains confusing, Ican only apologize. Ihaven't come up with anything better. Another source of potential confusion lies in m y use, at times, of Whipple's itinerary as published in the Railroad Survey Report and in his handwritten diary. Whipple presented his itinerary as ifitwere copied directlyfromhisdiary,butithadinfactbeenmodifiedinmanyplaceswhenhisofficialreport wasbeingprepared.Theactualdiaryhelpstoclarifysomepointsand,attimes,providesbetter descriptions of the landscapes. In quoting all of the various diaries, I've retained the spelling and punctuation of the diarists.
Rather than clutter the text with parenthetical binomials where various species are mentioned, IprovidedalistinAppendixD.IusedthePLANTSdatabase(http://plants.usda.gov/)forplant names, Wilson and Reeder (http://nmnhgoph.si.edu/msw/) for mammals, and the American Ornithologist's Union Bird List (http://www.aou.org/aou/birdlist.html) for birds.
Although Itry to avoid conclusions regarding the importance of various factors affecting the woodlands in the area of interest, Ihave, rather to my surprise, developed one hypotheses and one conclusion regarding presettlement conditions as compared with the present. First, I believetheevidencepresentedheresuggestsstronglythatthedistributionofwoodlandsover theareaisnotmuchdifferentnowthanitwasinthe1850s.Second,whileoveralljuniperdensity mayhavebeenlowerpriortoAnglosettlement,atleastthreeareasclearlywerecoveredwith very dense woodlands. One area, Poison Dam Draw northeast ofAsh Fork, may have had adenserstandofjuniperinthe1850sthanitdoesnow.Another,northofWalnutCreekand includingaportionofJuniperMesamayhavelostjunipersbetweenthe1850sand1916and then returned to high densities later.
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